Carbondale Brand

 Following up from a post of a few days ago, what is Carbondale's brand?  Decades ago, it was as a railroad town, hence the overwide town square. For the last 60 or so years, the community's brand has been as the home of SIUC, which means the image of the community is strongly linked to how well SIUC is doing, although, save at the entrances to the city, it has been hard to tell it. For years, The Chamber of Commerce has been painting paw prints leading from the entrances of the city to the campus , but if you did not know that the university's mascot was a dog, you would have no idea why they are there. In the past year or so, the Saluki Pride Committee has arranged to have murals celebrating SIUC painted on buildings throughout the city, with a selfie station on the side of Big Chill, so that is a start.

Paw Prints

 If you have noticed the paw prints on the main streets and a number of piece of private property, those are a fund raising and civic project of the Saluki Pride Committee of the Carbondale Chamber of Commerce. Each summer, recruits volunteer to spend 2 Sunday mornings painting prints on east and west 13 and north and south 51 as well as side streets such as Giant City Road and East Grand Avenue. All of the street pawprints point towards the SIUC campus, while the ones on private property point wherever the property owner wants. Getting a print painted in your driveway costs $100 with the money going to pay for the ones on the streets and to help fund the Chamber's Saluki Stay Scholarship.

Saluki Pride Pawprints

If you find your self driving around Carbondale this Sunday morning, keep an eye out for the Saluki Pride pawprint painters. Members of the Carbondale Chamber of Commerce Saluki Pride Committee and members of the SIUC football and volleyball teams start repainting the pawprints around town at 6 a.m.  two Sunday mornings out of the year. Two teams were out painting last Sunday and another two expect to finish the job this Sunday.